April Ryan Responds To Being Told To ‘Sit Down’ By Trump At Press Conference

“If I don’t ask a lot of those questions then they will not be asked,” Ryan said on 'The View.'

| November 09 2018,

9:30 pm

During a tense press conference Wednesday, President Trump rebuked several prominent members of the press, including April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks.

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As Blavity reported, when Ryan tried to ask the president a question, he told her, "Sit down. I didn’t call you. I didn't call you. I didn’t call you." Trump also called her "rude" and "hostile."

Ryan was trying to ask a question about voter suppression. Allegations of electoral wrongdoing have plagued midterm races in places like Georgia and Florida.

Thursday, Ryan appeared on ABC's The View to talk about her new book, Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House, and the wild press conference.

“As a reporter who's been doing this for 21 years, you want access," Ryan told the ladies at the table. "You want to ask your question, so there was a moment where the president had finished answering a question, and he was finding someone to call on for the next time. There was a pregnant moment, that pregnant pause that I lobbed a question in, and he responded."

Ryan added, “You know what that question was … it was voter suppression, and he responded, and he responded, 'Yeah, I got voter suppression,' or something like that, and so I stood up; I thought he was receiving my question and wanted to talk about it. And then when he sees me, he says, ‘Sit down’ you know, in a very terse tone. I was taken aback.”

"It was a real question about a real issue that Americans were dealing with just the day before," she added.

This isn’t the first time Ryan has had a scuffle with the Trump administration. Back in March 2017, when Sean Spicer was still press secretary, Spicer told her to stop shaking her head. She also found herself tussling with Sarah Sanders last Thanksgiving we reported.

Ryan told the ladies of TheView that while tough days on the job are one thing, having her safety threatened is another. The journalist said she'd been forced to hire private security after receiving threats.

According to TMZ, the reporter has received two serious threats in the last two months.

In September an unidentified person allegedly emailed her saying, "Your [sic] not Black. Your [sic] a loser with a big mouth that need [sic] slapped. If I ever see you, you're [sic] slap is coming. Go eat more s**t."

In October, she received a letter from a man claiming to be an ex-Army Ranger that read: "I know who you are; what you look like; where you work; where you live, and what you drive ... so I think I'll pay you a visit soon. Trust me - it will be the worst day of your life!"

Ryan's name was also found on the list of targets of the pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc. She did not, fortunately, receive one of his bombs.

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